Plane 3.9.0 stable released

ArduPlane Plane 3.9
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APMPlane
APMPlane.jpg750×291 24 KB

The ArduPilot development team is delighted to announce a new stable release of plane, version 3.9.0.

For those of you who have been testing the 3.9.0beta releases then you won’t see any surprises here. That are no changes since 3.9.0beta6. Also, many thanks for testing the betas!

For those of you coming from the last stable 3.8.5 release there are a lot of changes. For a start, this is the first release to support both the ChibiOS RTOS on STM32 boards and the NuttX RTOS. Previously stable releases only used the NuttX RTOS. The ArduPilot project is moving to
ChibiOS for future releases, and we expect to drop support for the NuttX builds for the next major stable release (which will probably be called 3.10.0).

When you install the 3.9.0 release on board such as a Pixhawk1, Cube or Pixracer you have a choice of which build to use. Choosing ChibiOS will give you better performance and some very nice new features. Choosing the NuttX (also known as “PX4” builds) will get you the same base that we have been using for years.

There are a few features that are in the NuttX build but not yet in the ChibiOS build, in particular the ChibiOS build does not yet support PWM based rangefinders. That will be fixed in a future release.

This release has a lot of new features. Some of the most important ones are:

  • DShot support for controlling ESCs
  • BLHeli pass-thru support for ESC configuration
  • automatic compass orientation on calibrating compasses
  • improved VTOL flight code, with improved transition support and loiter
  • support for Devo telemetry output
  • new battery monitoring system, with more flexible failsafes
  • built-in OSD support for boards with a MAX7456 OSD device

In addition, this release supports a lot of new flight boards, including:

  • AirbotF4
  • F4BY
  • KakuteF4
  • KakuteF7
  • MatekF405
  • MatekF405-Wing
  • mindpx-v2
  • mini-pix
  • Omnibusf4pro
  • Omnibusf7V2
  • Pixhawk4 and Pixhawk4-mini
  • CUAVv5
  • revo and revo-mini
  • sparky2

We also now have custom ChibiOS based builds for some existing boards, including:

  • CubeBlack
  • mRoX21
  • Pixhawk1
  • Pixracer

This means you now have a lot more choice in selecting a flight board to use with ArduPilot.

This release was made possible thanks to contributions from dozens of volunteer developers in the dev team. In total there are over 5 thousand changes since the 3.8.5 release. Special thanks to:

  • Siddharth Purohit
  • Tom Pittenger
  • Randy Mackay
  • Michael du Breuil
  • Peter Barker
  • Mark Whitehorn
  • Paul Riseborough
  • Francisco Ferreira
  • Jonathan Challinger
  • Leonard Hall
  • Alexander Malishev
  • Nathan E
  • Marco Robustini
  • Luis Vale Gonçalves
  • night-ghost
  • Patrick José Pereira
  • Lucas De Marchi
  • Eugene Shamaev
  • Philip Rowse
  • Amilcar Lucas
  • Kelly Foster
  • Fnoop
  • Pierre Kancir
  • Stephen Dade
  • Jaime Machuca
  • vierfuffzig
  • Henry Wwurzburg
  • Malcolm Churn
  • Holger Steinhaus

We hope you enjoy flying this release as much as we enjoyed making it.
Happy flying!

11 Likes
2

WOW, That is a lot of changes and a lot of boards now!!

3

Nice work Team
What team it is

4

awesome work :slight_smile:

5

Nice work, nice Team… go Ardupilot, go!

6

Great work team!!

Just wondering if you could please explain what exactly is the improved VTOL flight code, and how this improves transition support and loiter?

One bug bear with previous firmware was having to manually set the distances between the waypoints to achieve optimal transition with minimal hover time, if the transition point has been done more automatically this would be great!

7

Congratulations for the work.

How do you choose ChibiOS or NuttX version?

8

Fantastic effort and thank you so much. I’ve been waiting weeks for this so I’m really glad to try it out on my Pixhawk 4 tilt rotor. Thank you thank you.

9

It is the new loiter controller from Leonard, inherited from the copter code. It does a better job of smoothing out transitions, as well as providing better pilot control in QLOITER mode.

It only calculates the transition distance automatically for the transition from RTL to QRTL with Q_RTL_MODE set to 1. We probably will add automatic transition distance for other types of transition in the future, for example for a NAV_VTOL_LAND waypoint, but for the moment that is not automatic.

10

Will done, we appreciate the hard work you all do to allow us to enjoy doing what we do, thanks

11

Thank you Tridge for yet another great release. I do share the concert regarding auto transition distance calculation. For my set up, usually 70 meter is good. But there is one mission where the wind direction suddenly change during landing approaches, the plane glide past the landing point before it can slow down for Qloiter. Once enter the Qloiter mode, it make a hard stop and reverse to the landing waypoint aggressively. It looks dangerous and definitely not good for the airframe.

12

Would be nice to have an example mission to understand what you are talking about :slight_smile:

13

Congratulation for the great team work! I have can finish my vtol soon. Thank you Tridge and the whole team work.

14

Sorry for the mistype, I “hope” can finish my Vtol soon using this latest FW.

15

Thanks for this great release.

Any chance to see Arduplane + ChibiOS on Afroflight (STM32F103C8T6) ?

Edit : Found the answer here : CC3D STM32F4 based flight boards
Answer is “no”.

16

awesome work, thank… :grinning:

17

Great work team!! Thanks for your Job… :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

18

Hi just to be sure: When you say AirbotF4 can i run my Omnibus AIO v5 with ardupilot? It is a little confusing with all the hardware revisions Airbot is putting out.